As for immigration it may the politically correct thing to do to get it off the table as Krauthammer and apparantly Hannity believe. I can say with full confidence that this WILL not resolve the Republicans Latino minority status. First if we do not concede amnesty we can be totallly 100% guaranteed Obama will grant it before his teem expires anyway.

Second if anyone believes that a Repub party backing of amnesty will make most Latinos love our party that all I have to do is remind everyone Reagan granted amnesty to what was it 1.5 or 3 million illegals 25 yrs ago. And what was his thanks? 20 million more flood the country and 75% of the Asians, Latinos and the rest vote for the opposing party. We must first learn from history - not repeat it.

Rush Limbaugh is correct here. It is not about immigration policie. That is all a smoke screen. The issue for Latinos who are on the bottom rungs of th economic ladder, many are single mothers, is the government giveaways. period.

I don't know how our party can compete with bribery of blocks of citizens. We can't come back with ok we will give you food stamps, medicaid, welfare, unempolyment, easier disability, tax (the shrinking share of taxpayers ) more, school loans health care and guess what WE will throw in "free" season tickets to see your favorite football team - courtesy of the rich.

Hey aren't I entitled to have seats?

I don't know if a really charismatic, persuasive telegenic candidate is enough.

I don't know if the ideals that were the core traditional American values reflected in our constitution are enough. People want the easy route - the cold hard cash.

The only thing I can see is until this socialist turn crashes of its own weight - until taxes are 79% like in France, and our debt load cruhes us, and people will begin to realize this IS worse, until then, it may be too late.

One last warning. We read rumors about the increasing and expanding surviellance of our government. As our world, our lives, our humanity, including all our communications, our interactions, our believes, thoughts, transactions, buisness and personal become digitalized into the exponential data streams that are collected, catalogued, categorized, and analyzed by our government and sadly but surely private companies our freedoms will diminish.

Knowing full well how it is virtually impossible to protect electronic data, Indeed no average person can even get any kind of device that can be even reasonalby be protected (don't kiod yourself with the propaganda about enscryption - etc) we are virtually at 100% risk of totaliarism. Akin to the Okhrana police of the Tsars, and later the KGB.

We hear rumors that our government is surviellancing "right" wing groups. Oh really? Who, Why and who decides what is right wing or a danger. Obama would consider any teapartier to be a danger. I am not kidding. There is an appearance that progressive powers in our government is gearing up to combat what they will perceive is a counter revolution.

Warning made. Readers beware. I believe it is happening before us but under the radar.

People who have read or remember any of my posts would know I used to be more of a "moderate" republican. But three terms of Bushes prove this is doomed to failure. We do not need Jeb or now we have another one.

As before H gave us Clinton. W was worse - we got the racist socialist American hating guy we have. W tried to close the donut hole, compassionate conservatism etc. What did it accomplish? All it did was give away more benefits and then the left moves *forward* even more. It does not stop their movement. It does not make them happy. It doesn't even slow them down. WE have to keep the eye on the ball - the END GAME. What is their endgame One *world* governmentEssentially no religion. Both concepts are "Medievil"

There should be no USA. Just one country and the wealth shared and spread around as the central government sees fit.

Of course the libs, including my fellow Jewish intellectuals will say that this is "progress", this is "good, this is "fair". That those who will be in charge will still be duly elected, and we the people will have the power to remove, replace, change correct the government. This is fantasy. We will lose our freedoms, we will be servants of government and the power will be so great we will be helpless.

In any case the point is to watch where THIER endgame is. Concilialtion will only reuslt in short delays and not win anyone over to our side.

We do have to win with ideas. Not with more giveaways. But for now I don't think ideas will/can win. Not until the country breaks more. Unfortunately we will have to endure far more pain before the "masses" will be able to see this. Till then they buy the demogaguery that the rich need to pay more hook line and sinker. This is what they all say while waiting in line picking up their checks or running to the mailbox to do the same.

Maybe you misunderstand who is leading the secession charge. And, again, using YOUR analogy, if the ship is sinking and it makes sense to jump, why try to take 40% of the ship? (Quick math note, 20 states have secession petitons in, and 20 is 40% of 50.)

"President Barack Obama was not re-elected by people who want to 'take.' The president was re-elected by people who want to work -- and who were convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the president's policies were more likely to create work than were the policies advocated by my party.

The United States did not vote for socialism. It could not do so, because neither party offers socialism. Both parties champion a free enterprise economy cushioned by a certain amount of social insurance. The Democrats (mostly) want more social insurance, the Republicans want less. National politics is a contest to move the line of scrimmage, in a game where there's no such thing as a forward pass, only a straight charge ahead at the defensive line. To gain three yards is a big play."

You may be right about what many people thought they were voting for and that not so long ago what you write about Rep and Dem being about differing levels of social insurance-- but Obama is about quite a bit more than that.

Certainly I understand the emotional pressures that contemplate discharge through secession, but the Civil War settled that that is not happening. Nonetheless, the Tenth Amendment is real important and needs to be re-reified into our political-legal culture.

President Barack Obama was not re-elected by people who want to "take." The president was re-elected by people who want to work -- and who were convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the president's policies were more likely to create work than were the policies advocated by my party.

The United States did not vote for socialism. It could not do so, because neither party offers socialism. Both parties champion a free enterprise economy cushioned by a certain amount of social insurance. The Democrats (mostly) want more social insurance, the Republicans want less. National politics is a contest to move the line of scrimmage, in a game where there's no such thing as a forward pass, only a straight charge ahead at the defensive line. To gain three yards is a big play.

You may be right about what many people thought they were voting for and that not so long ago what you write about Rep and Dem being about differing levels of social insurance-- but Obama is about quite a bit more than that.

Certainly I understand the emotional pressures that contemplate discharge through secession, but the Civil War settled that that is not happening. Nonetheless, the Tenth Amendment is real important and needs to be re-reified into our political-legal culture.

The most widely offered explanation for Mitt Romney's defeat is that the Republican Party is disproportionately composed of -- aging -- white males.

That is, alas, true.

But the real question is what Republicans should do with this truth.

There are two responses.

The nearly universal response -- meaning the response offered by the liberal media and liberal academics (and some Republicans) -- is that the Republican Party needs to rethink its positions, moving away from conservatism and toward the political center.

The other response is for conservatives and the Republican Party to embark on a massive campaign to influence, and ultimately change, the values of those groups that voted Democrat.

The Democratic Party, and the left generally, have done a magnificent job in identifying conservative values as white male values. One reason for their success is that they dominate virtually every lever of influence -- the high schools and universities, television, newspapers, movies, pop culture and everything else except talk radio. Another is that they really believe that conservative values are nothing more than white male -- especially aging white male -- values. Remember, leftism has its own trinity -- the prism through which it perceives the world -- race, gender and class. In this case the race is white; the gender is male; and the class is rich.

As a result of this identification, there is no debate over whether the minorities' (and single women's) values are correct or whether the values of the white males are correct. The left has successfully forestalled any such national discussion by simply reducing conservative values to the dying fulminations of a former ruling class.

In the words of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, "Mitt Romney is the president of white male America."

This identification seems to be working. But it's intellectually dishonest. Aging white males are as important to the left as they are to the right.

In a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, liberal Harvard professor Benjamin M. Friedman strongly criticized the Tea Party. After citing "surveys showing that Tea Party members are 'predominantly white, male, older, more college-educated and better off economically than typical Americans,'" he noted parenthetically "they sound like, say, readers of The New York Review of Books."

Come to think of it, these people who make up the tea party also sound like the people who attend classical music concerts, who endow concert halls, museums, hospitals, and universities, and fund left-wing causes (George Soros, for example).

Perhaps when this generation of aging white males dies off, aging women, aging Latino and black males, and young people will become the readers of journals such as the New York Review of Books and endow symphony orchestras.

I suspect not. And if not, the left may come to regret its contempt for this particular group. Without aging white males, I doubt the New York Times would survive. How many young people, females, Hispanics and blacks subscribe to the New York Times?

Obviously the issue for the left isn't aging white males, it is conservatives, whether they are young or old, white or nonwhite, male or female. If female aborigines were conservative, the left would have a problem with female aborigines.

For conservatives, the issue is that for generations now, they have failed to make the case for their values. They haven't even conveyed conservative values to many of their children. And when they have, the university has often succeeded in undoing them.

The only answer to the "demographic" problem, therefore, is to bring women (single women, to be precise), young people, Hispanics, and blacks to conservative values. I wrote a column in September ("It's not Just the Economy, Stupid!") criticizing the Mitt Romney campaign for only talking about jobs and the economy. President Obama kept saying that this election was about two different visions of America. But like George Herbert Walker Bush, the Romney campaign appeared to disdain "the vision thing."

Our only hope for America is that every conservative takes upon him or herself the project of learning what American and conservative values are, coming to understand what leftism stands for, and learning how to make the case for those values to women, young people, blacks and Hispanics. That is what my radio show, latest book and Prager University are about. And while I am, happily, hardly alone, there are still far too few of us who understand "the vision thing." Surely the Republican establishment has not.

We should missionize for the American Trinity (Liberty, In God We Trust, E Pluribus Unum) as least as passionately as the left has missionized for its antithesis -- Egalitarianism, Secularism and Multiculturalism. Or we will lose America as we have always known it.

Several post-election developments have already served advance warning on America, or at least the portion paying attention between so-called reality TV shows, that President Obama’s second term will be every bit as dangerous and ultimately disastrous as those of us deeply concerned about the consequences of his reelection warned it will be. I will look at just three of them. There are many others.

Dependency. Blogger Matt Trivisonno first noticed a delay in the release of the USDA’s monthly food stamp enrollment report, which usually occurs near the end of each month, in early October. When it was data-dumped late in the afternoon on Friday, October 5, two days after the first presidential debate (imagine that), it showed that July enrollment had edged up to a then-all-time record.

What should have come out in late October didn’t arrive until November 9, yet another Friday afternoon, three convenient days after the election. It’s now clear that Team Obama deliberately sat on it, as its contents would certainly have become a final-days election issue had they been known. August enrollment exploded by over 400,000 to a record-shattering 47.1 million.

Revised data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that the economy added 192,000 jobs during that same month. Though that level of monthly job growth, symptomatic of the worst economic recovery since World War II, is still unacceptable, the food stamp rolls should be declining, and they’re not. That’s because the program has morphed from being about temporarily helping the truly needy into a dependency-engendering, vote-buying enterprise.

It should be clear to anyone with their eyes open that even if the economy improves, something Obama seems bound and determined to prevent in action while feigning fealty to that goal in words, we’re doomed to four more years of an unrelenting effort to add objectively not needy recipients to the food stamp and other dependency rolls. Gutting welfare reform, which HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has already seriously compromised with loosened work requirements presented last summer, is a key objective.

Energy. In news naturally ignored by the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and virtually everyone else in the establishment media, The Hill reported late last week that the Interior Department “issued a final plan to close 1.6 million acres of federal land in the West (i.e., 2,500 square miles) originally slated for oil shale development.”

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Environmental Protection Agency plan to spend the next four years using largely phony environmental concerns to prevent the country from seeing affordable energy costs and from achieving long-term net energy independence. The U.S. could accomplish the latter within a decade if the government would, with appropriate oversight, let the oil and gas industry do in the West what it has successfully been doing in North Dakota and Pennsylvania. Indeed, $3 per gallon gas will likely become the economy-inhibiting floor, while any number of geopolitical or weather-related shocks could again send energy prices skyrocketing.

Regulation and cronyism. On October 23, John Hayward at Human Events identified what we would face if Obama won reelection:

Sprinkled through his speeches and debate performances are little hints that he (Obama) plans to double down on everything the American public hates. Solyndra? More to come. Regulation? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Taxes? Not nearly high enough. ObamaCare? Not nearly complicated enough. Medicare? Ignore your lying calculators, it’s just fine the way it is.

Even though many of its regulations don’t go live until 2014, ObamaCare is already holding back the job market. As the Wall Street Journal reported on November 4 (“Health-Care Law Spurs a Shift to Part-Time Workers”):

Several restaurants, hotels and retailers have started or are preparing to limit schedules of hourly workers to below 30 hours a week. That is the threshold at which large employers in 2014 would have to offer workers a minimum level of insurance or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 for each worker.

The reason companies are making these moves now is that the penalty thresholds in 2014 will be driven by reported employment during 2013. The bifurcation of the workforce between those desperately hanging on to full-time jobs and those who can only find part-time or temporary employment (if they’re even that lucky), already well under way during Obama’s first term, is destined to accelerate during his second.

Thus, Obama, no longer needing voter approval, supported by legions of federal apparatchiks, and clearly unconcerned about annoyances like the Constitution’s supposed limits on executive power and authority, now has a four-year open field.

As the ugliness continues to unfold, I certainly hope that the millions of conservatives who chose to stay home, thereby guaranteeing Mitt Romney’s defeat in four states where their presence in numbers comparable to 2004 and 2008 would have given him an electoral vote majority, seriously question their decisions. Jim Geraghty at National Review noted that even in the face of dozens of external and self-inflicted factors leading to his underperformance, Romney could have won the election if a combined 407,000 sideline-sitters would have shown up in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado. New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada should also have been within reach.

By sitting out what may come to be seen as the most consequential presidential election in almost 150 years — this time potentially fracturing the union beyond repair instead of saving it, as Lincoln’s 1864 reelection did — they have for now forfeited any right to have their complaints taken seriously. If they continue to refuse to engage, it will only get worse.

One week post election and I am already going crazy every time I have to hear Obama's voice.

His hatred of America, anger, racism just keeps getting worse.

Well Michelle stated she did not like America. Now, I no longer do.

My liberal Jewish family members better not bring up politics on Thanksgiving.

I am no longer proud to be Jewish. Sorry. My brethren have given a lot to the world. But Obama is absolutely unforgiveable. Obviously most liberals are not Jewish but Jews have a disproportionate amount of influence in respect to their numbers. Just like the socialist movements in Europe and including Russian Communism. Without Jewish political theory, votes, media, financial support there is no doubt this guy would never be President.

I am not sure if any of the founding fathers of America were Jews.

My Jewish liberal guys and gals will be sorry for what they did to America. They jeopordize their own earned privileged position. They are apparantly too dumb to know it.

Frum sounds all mixed up.

I prefer Krauthammer, Levin, Kaufman, J. AND B. Goldbergs and even Jackie Mason.

In reading Stalin he was personally somewhat neutral about the Jews. It wasn't a racial or genocidal thing with him. Yes , he murdered many. He was just afraid of their ties to the capatalistic country called America and probably Zionism.

Stalin did have a problem with the "intellectual" Trostsky and less "militant" (if you will) Jewish soicalists, but any dislike of Jews seemed to be more from a paranioa about their politics and threat to his power. Not that he hated Jews "per se".

The social Democrats and social capatilists of Europe from the 1800's to early 1900's would be so proud of the liberal Jews of today in the US.

I have great regard for Mark Alexander and his Patriot Post. Indeed I make a donation every December.

That said, I have not much patience for the War of Secession history that ignores slavery. Any analysis of State's Rights that ignores this is profoundly incomplete at best. Nonetheless, there are other points of merit in here IMHO.

======================================

Alexander's Column – November 15, 2012 Mapping the Right Road ForwardBig Problems Require Big Solutions"[T]he crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves." --George Washington (1774)

I've heard that fruit doesn't fall far from its tree, and have often found that to be true. A bright young Patriot, who also happens to be my high-school daughter, demonstrated this principle just yesterday.In a post-election summary to our fellow Patriots last week, I included images of election maps that exposed some facts Obama and his Leftist cadres don't want you to contemplate.Chief among those facts are that the assault on Liberty we witnessed in the presidential election was led, as in 2008, primarily by urban dwellers, most of whom reside on "government plantations," and subsist on the spoils of what Obama calls "redistributive justice." That collectivist constituency now accounts for almost 50 (FIFTY) percent of Obama's voter base. Socialist Democrats have mastered the practice of co-opting (read: "buying") their allegiance and getting them to the polls. The good news is that about nine million fewer Obama voters showed up in 2012.The county-by-county election maps clearly revealed the geographical delineation between the Left-leaning urban centers and the Right-leaning rest of the nation. Naturally, I observed that this delineation formed reasonable lines for secession, and I recalled these words from fellow Tennessean Nathan Bedford Forrest on the Second War for Independence (as it was known in the South): "I loved the old government. I loved the old Constitution. I do not hate it; I am opposing now only the radical revolutionists who are trying to destroy it."So, you ask, what does this have to do with fruit trees?My daughter walked into my home study (affectionately called "The Man Cave" around our house), and she was sporting one of those expressions that conveyed she was on a mission. She asked, "Can I sign a petition for our state to secede?"Apparently, as you may have heard, some despondent souls across the nation, still licking their wounds after Obama's re-election, are preparing to surrender the future of the Republic. They have launched official secession petitions from all 50 states on the most illogical of places to undertake such folly -- Obama's White House "We the People" page for online petitions, which promises a response from the president to every petition that gathers more than 25,000 signatures.Those petitions are closing in on a million signatures.My daughter got wind of this, and she's now ready to grab her M-4 and a case of 5.56 and start over, with her brothers at her side! I love her spirit. She's one of those "quiet girls," but if you're on the wrong side of Liberty, you'd best get out of her field of fire.

After telling her that she most certainly could sign a petition for secession (just not one managed by Obama's lemmings), we had a discussion about the frustrations that have led some of our countrymen to give up on ever restoring Rule of Law.I explained that nine of the secession petitions on the White House website have already exceeded the 25,000 signature threshold, and I anticipate Obama's response will be some version of what he has already said about grassroots conservatives -- something about those Tea Party people being an "angry mob" who are "waving their little tea bags around" while "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."Obama and his sycophantic Leftmedia will have a good laugh with these understandable but ill-conceived petitions -- and that's unfortunate, because the petitions provide an opening for Obama to further marginalize legitimate grievances about the Left's collective disregard for our Constitution.Now, please don't flood our website's "Comments" page with a defense of these petitions. I happen to agree with old N.B. Forrest in his assessment of the principle cause of the first attempt at secession, and I take exception to the gubmint schools' uncritical and unflinching idolization of Abe Lincoln, whose reckless disregard of our Constitution exceeds that of any president in our history, with the possible exception of Barack Obama. (I guess that assessment may result in a flood of objections, too.)Post Your OpinionThe fact is, I don't support secession, and having been around a couple of revolutions in Africa and Eastern Europe, I would much prefer constitutional restoration over insurrection -- if the former is achievable.So why, in my assessment of the electoral maps, mention secession at all?Because an alternative worth contemplating seriously would be to pursue a Constitutional Confederacy -- an alliance of those states that are not under the mob rule of urban Leftists, whose delegations could assemble to re-ratify our Constitution and the Rule of Law it enshrines.As of today, Republicans control 30 state governorships and 27 state legislatures, and twice as many states are under total Republican leadership (governor and both houses) as states controlled by Democrats. That is plenty enough muscle to populate a Constitutional Convention for the purpose of re-adopting our authentic Constitution in its original form, amended as prescribed, and thus rejecting the so-called "living constitution" now obscured beyond recognition by the "despotic branch" of which Thomas Jefferson so presciently warned. Those states re-ratifying would then reject extra-constitutional regulations and taxes in favor of Tenth Amendment federalism as prescribed when each state first ratified our Constitution.Now that is a movement in support of "We the People," which would generate a LOT of heartburn for Obama and his legions of urban socialists.OK, I haven't completely taken leave of my senses -- but this notion of a Constitutional Confederation is representative of the big ideas that need to be considered in order to resolve big problems. And if you haven't yet taken leave of your senses, you know our nation is beset with BIG problems.Here is where we find ourselves after the presidential election.

Our nation is in crisis -- and given the post election "economic revisions" this week, that crisis is not abating. The poverty rate was revised upward to 16.1 percent -- a record 49 million people living in poverty by American standards (up 3 million more than estimated the week prior to the election). The Latino poverty rate was revised upward to 28 percent. Jobless claims were up 78,000 this week, with Pennsylvania and Ohio hardest hit -- just wait for the December jobless claims...Here is the short list of major domestic problems we face: Massive debt, crippling taxes, mandated tax increases and budget cuts under the Budget Control Act of 2011 -- which will likely result in economic reversal (recession), out-of-control welfare and entitlement spending, inflation (just watch), overbearing government regulations and health care mandates, ever-expanding government plantation populations, failed educational institutions, increasing dependence on foreign oil, declining defense capability and the increasing threat of another devastating strike by Islamofascists on U.S. soil.The short list of international problems: Chinese manipulation of debt markets, the re-emergence of Russian authoritarianism, the meltdown of relations in the Middle East and Africa, and Europe plunging back into economic recession.Oh, and the biggest domestic problem: The re-election of a "community organizer," who has never so much as operated a lemonade stand, with the expectation that he will solve all the other problems, even though he and his "useful idiots" spent the last four years making matters much worse.

Barack Hussein Obama has no legislative mandate, but neither do the establishment Republicans. Obama did not win the 2012 election -- the GOP lost it. However, I can assure you that Obama will proceed as if he won every vote in America, not the thin 4/10ths of one percent that reseated him. That assurance was evident in Obama's post-election press conference this week, the first in eight months, when he doubled down on his list of Leftist mandates.Post Your OpinionThe good news is that Republicans can counter Obama's platform and restore the integrity of our Constitution, but only if the conservative wing of the Republican Party convinces the rest of the GOP to do what Mitt Romney failed to do -- rally grassroots conservatives. That will require leaders in the House and Senate who actually get "the grassroots thing," which the current leadership does not. (If new legislative leadership does not emerge, see "Constitutional Confederation" reference above.)To better understand what the Romney campaign did not, the last time a GOP presidential contender genuinely identified with grassroots folks and they with him, was 1984, when Ronald Reagan won 525 electoral votes to his Democrat opponent's 13. (To see what an election map looks like when a presidential candidate has earned the support of grassroots America, click here.) The Reagan model was, and remains, the right road forward.The current cover of Newsweek proclaims "GOP: You're History" (which is ironic for a failed magazine in its final weeks of publication), but if the GOP does not get it right from this day forward, the Republic as we know it will be history.The fact is, almost every critical national problem we face is, in every respect, the direct result of the gross political violation of the limits our Constitution prescribes on the scope of our federal government. Period.

The current crises are accompanied by great opportunities, both in terms of policy and politics -- restocking our national and state legislatures with right-minded leadership in 2014 and 2016.We're unlikely to win the support of any government plantation dependents -- those welfare captives who make up the Left's largest constituency (50 percent). We're not going to change the minds of ideological socialists who make up about 10 percent of Leftist voters. But the right appeal will win over a majority of the remaining 40 percent of Obama's "middle constituency" and change the political landscape in the next two election cycles. Recall that a mere two-percent swing in the most recent election would have resulted in Obama's defeat -- which makes his victory all the more bitter. The right conservative leadership has the opportunity to win a 10 to 15 percent swing by rallying grassroots America to the cause of Liberty.It has taken generations for our nation to become mired deep in the mud in which we now find ourselves stuck. It will take more than a few election cycles to pull us out. But there has been a great awakening among Patriots, and our ranks have grown rapidly in recent years. With the right leadership, the march to restore Liberty and constitutional integrity will be unstoppable.Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut MorsSemper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis

The Conservative FutureBy DAVID BROOKSPublished: November 19, 2012 15 Comments

If you listened to the Republican candidates this year, you heard a conventional set of arguments. But if you go online, you can find a vibrant and increasingly influential center-right conversation. Most of the young writers and bloggers in this conversation intermingle, but they can be grouped, for clarity’s sake, around a few hot spots:

Paleoconservatives. The American Conservative has become one of the more dynamic spots on the political Web. Writers like Rod Dreher and Daniel Larison tend to be suspicious of bigness: big corporations, big government, a big military, concentrated power and concentrated wealth. Writers at that Web site, and at the temperamentally aligned Front Porch Republic, treasure tight communities and local bonds. They’re alert to the ways capitalism can erode community. Dispositionally, they are more Walker Percy than Pat Robertson.

Larison focuses on what he calls the imperial tendencies of both the Bush and Obama foreign policies. He crusades against what he sees as the unchecked killing power of drone strikes and champions a more modest and noninterventionist foreign policy.

Lower-Middle Reformists. Reihan Salam, a writer for National Review, E21 and others, recently pointed out that there are two stories about where the Republican Party should go next. There is the upper-middle reform story: Republicans should soften their tone on the social issues to win over suburban voters along the coasts. Then there is a lower-middle reform story: Republicans should focus on the specific economic concerns of the multiethnic working class.

Salam promotes the latter. This means acknowledging that working-class concerns are not what they were in the 1980s. The income tax is less burdensome than the payroll tax. Family disruption undermines social mobility. Republicans, he argues, should keep the social conservatism, which reinforces families, and supplement it with an agenda that supports upward mobility and social capital.

Similarly, Henry Olsen of the American Enterprise Institute has argued for a Republican Party that listens more closely to working-class concerns. Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review has argued for family-friendly tax credits and other measures that reinforce middle-class dignity. Jim Manzi wrote a seminal article in National Affairs on the need to promote innovation while reducing inequality.

Soft Libertarians. Some of the most influential bloggers on the right, like Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok and Megan McArdle, start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way.

Many of these market-oriented writers emphasize that being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago published an influential book, “A Capitalism for the People,” that took aim at crony capitalism. Tim Carney of The Washington Examiner does muckraking reporting on corporate-federal collusion. Rising star Derek Khanna wrote a heralded paper on intellectual property rights for the House Republican Study Committee that was withdrawn by higher-ups in the party, presumably because it differed from the usual lobbyist-driven position.

There are a number of unpredictable libertarian-leaning writers, including Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic on civil liberties issues, and Eugene Volokh on legal and free speech concerns.

Burkean Revivalists. This group includes young conservatives whose intellectual roots go back to the organic vision of society described best by Edmund Burke but who are still deeply enmeshed in current policy debates.

Yuval Levin, the editor of National Affairs is one of the two or three most influential young writers in politics today. He argues that we are now witnessing the fiscal crisis of the entitlement state, exemplified most of all by exploding health care costs. His magazine promotes a big agenda of institutional modernization.

The lawyer Adam J. White has argued for an approach to jurisprudence and regulatory affairs based on modesty, but not a doctrinaire clinging to original intent. Ryan Streeter of Indiana champions civil-society conservatism, an updated version of the Jack Kemp style.

By and large, these diverse writers did not grow up in the age of Reagan and are not trying to recapture it. They disdain what you might call Donor Base Republicanism. Most important, they matured intellectually within a far-reaching Web-based conversation. In contrast to many members of the conservative political-entertainment complex, they are data-driven, empirical and low-key in tone.

They are united more by a style of feedback and mutual scrutiny than by a common agenda. Some politically unorthodox people in this conversation, such as Josh Barro of Bloomberg View, Meghan Clyne of National Affairs and Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, specialize in puncturing sentimentality and groupthink.

Since Nov. 6, the G.O.P. has experienced an epidemic of open-mindedness. The party may evolve quickly. If so, it’ll be powerfully influenced by people with names like Reihan, Ramesh, Yuval and Derek Khanna.

Common Sense After a Close ElectionNorthern Division Republican WomenRancho Cordova, CaliforniaNovember 17, 2012

"Now let's pull up our socks, wipe our noses and get back in this fight."

After listening to ten days of hand wringing and doom saying from the usual suspects that Republicans must abandon our principles if we are to survive, we need a little of Mark Twain's common sense. I suggest we all take it to heart.

He said, "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it -- and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."

So it is in that spirit that I will begin with three incontrovertible truths about this election.

First, the same election that returned Barack Obama to the White House also returned the second largest House Republican majority since World War II - bigger than anything Newt Gingrich ever had.

Second, according to polls before, during and after this election, the American people agree with us fundamentally on issues involving the economy, Obamacare, government spending, bailouts - you name it.

Third, the American people are about to get a graduate level course in Obamanomics, and at the end of that course, they are going to be a lot sadder and a lot wiser.

That is not to say that there aren't many lessons that we need to learn and to learn well from this election, particularly here in California. But capitulation is not one of them.

Have we forgotten that just two years ago, Republicans campaigned on clear principles of individual liberty and constitutionally limited government? We took strong and united stands to oppose Obamacare, rein in out-of-control spending, roll back the regulatory burdens that are crushing our economy and yes - dare I say it - secure our borders? Have we forgotten that the result was one of the most stunning mid-term elections in American history: a net gain of 63 U.S. House seats, six U.S. Senate seats, 19 state legislatures, six governors and nearly 700 state legislative seats?

Now we're told, just two years later, after a net loss of just eight House seats, two Senate seats and a 2 1/2-percentage point loss of the White House, that we must abandon these principles or consign ourselves to the dustbin of history.

If you want to see a catastrophic election, look at 1976.

We not only lost the Presidency, but as a result of that election the Democrats held 61 U.S. Senate seats (today they have 55); and 292 House seats (today they have just 201).

Then, we heard the same chorus of impending doom that we hear today. We had to moderate our image. We had to broaden our base. In short, that we had to become more like the Democrats.

Here is what Ronald Reagan said to the naysayers of 1976:

Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.

I don 't know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, "We must broaden the base of our party"-when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents...

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Fortunately, we had the good sense to take that advice, and four years later Ronald Reagan became President, and shortly after that it was morning again in America. That would never have happened if we had listened to the usual suspects of their day and become a pathetic reflection of the Democrats. As Phil Gramm said, "why would anyone want to vote for a fake Democrat when they can have the real thing?"

The first of the cold stove lids we are told not to sit on is illegal immigration. Republicans, they say, must accept the notion that our nation can no longer control its borders and we should declare amnesty for the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens now in this country. We should do so, we are told, because our position on border security has hopelessly alienated Latino voters who would otherwise share our values.

It is true that Latino voters are a growing part of the American electorate - making up ten percent of the vote in 2012, of which 71 percent voted for Barack Obama, according to the CBS exit poll.

Sean Trende is the senior political analyst for Real Clear Politics. Last May, he published an article addressing this argument directly. He made three points.

First, Latino voters are not a monolithic group on this issue. Citing 2008 exit polling, he noted that a majority of Latino voters "either thought that illegal immigration was fairly unimportant or thought that it was important and voted Republican."

So why are Latinos voting for Democrats? Very simply, he said, once you adjust for socio-economic status, Latinos vote pretty much the same as the general voting population. But because they are disproportionately poor, they tend to vote disproportionately Democratic. However, as they begin to work their way up the socio-economic ladder and assimilate into American society, they become more and more Republican.

Second, citing research from the Pew Institute, he pointed out that the wave of illegal immigration has now crested, and may actually be reversing. He noted that every immigration wave has followed this pattern. Those who stay become more and more assimilated and more and more Republican as the years go by.

As recently as 20 years ago, we used to hear a lot about the Italian vote or the Irish vote. We don't hear about that anymore because they have melted into the general population. The demographic tide, he said, is not running against the Republicans, but running with them.

Third, he points out that a very sizeable part of the Republican base is firmly opposed to illegal immigration, and that abandoning that position could be politically catastrophic. He reminded us, "In a large, diverse country, every move to gain one member of a political coalition usually alienates another member."

Heather MacDonald makes the same point in the aftermath of the election. She notes that 62 percent of Latino voters support Obamacare. They overwhelmingly support higher taxes to pay for a larger government and more public services. These are not voters who will suddenly flock to the Republican banner because we have reversed our position on border security.

That's not to say Republicans should ignore the Latino vote - far from it - and I will get to that in a few minutes. But to suggest that Republicans need to reverse themselves on a fundamental issue of national sovereignty and the rule of law is unprincipled, counterproductive, self-destructive and wrong.

Ironically, the issues where most Latino and African-American voters do agree with us are the social issues, like abortion and marriage -- but of course, we're told by the same naysayers that we should repudiate our position on these messy social issues.

Let's look closer at the polling on the social issues. According to exit polling by Public Opinion Strategies, it is true that five percent of voters last week said that the most important issue in their vote for President was their pro-choice/pro-abortion position. Five percent of the entire electorate is nothing to sneeze at.

But four percent of voters said that the most important issue in casting their vote for President was their pro-life/anti-abortion position. That's a statistical tie.

I have a question for you. How many of those hard-core, single-issue abortion-on-demand Obama voters will suddenly switch their votes to Republicans once we've renounced our position on this issue?

Now, here's a bonus question: how many of that four percent of the electorate who support us solely because of our pro-life position are going to stay with us once we have repudiated them?

It is important in politics to know the difference between addition and subtraction. Addition is what creates majorities and subtraction is what destroys them. In this single exercise, we have just subtracted four percent of the entire American electorate from our vote and added little or nothing.

Now, repeat this process on every other so-called social issue, and tell me if we will be better off or worse off for taking this advice.

With all this said, there is no blinking at the fact that we just lost an election that we should have won, and to pretend there's nothing wrong meets Einstein's definition of insanity. There's a great deal wrong and a great deal that we need to address.

The voters who appeared at the polls agree with us on Obamacare. According to the CBS exit poll, by a plurality of 49 to 44 percent, they want to repeal some or all of Obamacare.

They agree with us on the size of government. By a margin of 51 to 43 percent, they believe that government is "doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals."

They agree with us on taxes. By a resounding margin of 63 to 33 percent, they disagreed with the statement that "taxes should be raised to help cut the deficit."

Perhaps most telling of all, 52 percent of voters agreed "things in this country today are seriously off on the wrong track," and yet then voted to continue down that wrong track for another four years.

As Lincoln said, "The voters are everything. If the voters get their backsides too close to the fire, they'll just have to sit on the blisters a while." It is a painful experience; but it is a learning experience. And at the end of that experience, they emerge sadder but wiser and in time for the next election.

We are winning the issues. And that means over time we will be winning the votes -- but only if we stay true to our principles and true to the millions of Americans who are already with us and many more who may not consider themselves Republicans today - but who believe as we believe.

What was the single biggest political movement in 2009 and 2010? It was the much-maligned, politically incorrect Tea Party, which energized fully one third of the American electorate across party lines. Although 60 percent were Republicans, 20 percent were Independents and 20 percent were Democrats. Long before the Tea Party, we had another name for that phenomenon. We used to call it the "Reagan Coalition." But this year, those who tell us we need a bigger tent told the Tea Party to get out. And many did.

Who brought a tidal wave of young people into the party? It was the much maligned and politically incorrect Ron Paul, whose simple message of unadulterated freedom resonated deeply on college campuses. Eight thousand UC Berkeley students turned out last year to hear that message. But this year, those who tell us we need a bigger tent told Ron Paul and his supporters to get out. And they did. In fact, many of their votes went to Obama.

A well-intentioned supporter e-mailed me last week and said, "we've got to kick the religious right out of the party." I reminded him that we did that in 1976, when the religious right voted for Jimmy Carter.

My point is, you cannot build a majority by systematically ejecting the constituent parts of that coalition. You build a majority by adding to that coalition by taking your principles to new constituencies.

Working Americans of every race know instinctively that you cannot borrow and spend your way rich. We need to appeal to them.

Immigrants came to this country to escape the stultifying central planning and corrupt bureaucracies that ravaged their economies. We need to appeal to them.

For the first time in our history, young people face a bleaker future than their parents enjoyed. We need to appeal to them.

The very groups of voters most damaged by Obama's policies are those who voted for Obama - we need to appeal to them.

Not in the closing days of a campaign poisoned with partisanship - but right now.

We need to recognize that a large portion of our population is not familiar with the self-evident truths of the American Founding and has no compass with which to follow back to the prosperity, happiness and fulfillment that is the hallmark of free societies.

Without that clarion call - without a party of freedom willing to paint our positions in bold colors - I am afraid that as the economy suffocates under the avalanche of government burdens, intrusions, restrictions, regulations and edicts, people in their growing despair, will increasingly turn to the false hope that paternalistic government offers.

The only antidote to that is the self-evident truth of the American founding: that freedom works and we need to put it back to work.

Like it or not, we are at this moment the only party equipped to revive and restore those truths and take them to the millions of Americans who are desperately searching for them.

Great parties are built upon great principles, and they are judged by their devotion to those principles. Since its inception, the central principle of the Republican Party can be summarized in a word: freedom. The closer we have hewn to this principle, the better we have done; the farther we have drifted from it, the worse that we - and the country - have done.

Dick Armey put it more simply: "When we act like us, we win, and when we act like them, we lose."

The Republican Women formed originally as the educational arm of the Republican Party. Never has that role been more important than it is today. We will not win the political battle until we win the battle over principles. We need to begin that campaign today. We can be confident that these principles resonate, but only when we are true to them with our existing constituencies while we reach out with them to new constituencies.

That is our challenge. That is our destiny. That is the salvation of our country. Now, fellow Republicans, let's pull up our socks, wipe our noses, and get back in this fight.

I like the McClintock piece. I don't know how a California conservative stays sane and interested in politics.

Isn't it amazing that Republicans worst year ever, 1976, was followed by a) Dem governing failure, and b) Republican return to principles and the election of Reagan winning 40 states in 1980 and 49 states in 1984.

Many observations, but take the abortion question for one. Assume 40% roughly of the electorate are to the right, 40% are to the left and the remaining are in the center. From a pro-life vs. libertarian (false argument) how does it make sense to kick 4% of the electorate (10% of your base) out of your party? Especially when you know that the 5% hard core pro-choice will never join you for doing that.

After his party's devastating setback in the 2010 midterm elections, Barack Obama was re-elected earlier this month by painting his Republican opponents as heartless in favoring lower taxes for the rich. They were portrayed as nativists for opposing the Dream Act amnesty for illegal immigrants, and as callous in battling the federal takeover of health care.

Republicans countered with arguments that higher taxes on the employer class hurt the economy in general. They assumed most voters knew that amnesties are euphemisms for undermining federal law and in the past have had the effect of promoting more illegal immigration. They tried to point out that there is no such thing as free universal health care, since Obamacare will only shift responsibility from health care practitioners and patients to inefficient government bureaucracies and hide the true costs with higher taxes.

And they utterly failed to convince the American people of any of that.

Why doesn't the Republican-controlled House of Representatives give both voters and President Obama what they wished for?

The current battle over the budget hinges on whether to return to the Clinton-era income tax rates, at least for those who make more than $250,000 a year. Allowing federal income rates to climb to near 40 percent on that cohort would bring in only about $80 billion in revenue a year -- a drop in the bucket when set against the $1.3 trillion annual deficit that grew almost entirely from out-of-control spending since 2009.

Instead, why not agree to hike federal income tax rates only on the true "millionaires and billionaires," "fat cats" and "corporate jet owners" whom Obama has so constantly demonized? In other words, skip over the tire-store owner or dentist, and tax those, for example, who make $1 million or more in annual income. Eight out of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States voted for Obama. Corporate lawyers and the affluent in Hollywood and on Wall Street should all not mind "paying their fair share."

Upping federal tax rates to well over 40 percent on incomes of more than $1 million a year would also offer a compromise: shielding most of the small businesspeople Republicans wish to protect while allowing Obama to tax the one-percenters whom he believes have so far escaped paying what they owe, and then putting responsibility on the president to keep his part of the bargain in making needed cuts in spending.

Likewise, instead of hiking death taxes on small businesspeople, why not close loopholes for billion-dollar estates by taxing their gargantuan bequests to pet foundations that avoid estate taxes. Why should a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates act as if he built his own business and can solely determine how his fat-cat fortune is spent for the next century -- meanwhile robbing the government of billions of dollars in lost estate taxes along with any federal say in how such fortunes are put to public use?

The president flipped in an election year on the Dream Act. Suddenly, in 2012, Obama decided that he indeed did have the executive power to order amnesty without congressional approval for those who came illegally as children, stayed in school or joined the military, avoided arrest and thus deserved citizenship. In response, Republicans supposedly lost Latino support by insisting that federal immigration law be enforced across the board, regardless of race, class, gender or national origin.

But why not make the president's Dream Act part of the envisioned grand bargain on immigration? Once it is agreed upon that we have the ability to distinguish those foreign nationals deserving of amnesty, then surely we also have the ability to determine who does not meet that agreed-upon criteria.

Why, then, cannot conservatives allow a pathway to citizenship for the play-by-the-rules millions who qualify, while regrettably enforcing an un-Dream Act for others who just recently arrived illegally; enrolled in, and have remain on, public assistance; or have been convicted of a crime? Who could object to that fair compromise?

Finally, Obamacare will be imposed on all Americans by 2014. But so far the Obama administration has granted more than 1,200 exemptions to favored corporations and unions, covering about 4 million Americans. Shouldn't Republicans seek to end all exemptions rather than tackle the improbable task of overturning Obamacare itself? Their motto should be: "Equality for all; special treatment for no one!"

One of the brilliant themes of the 2012 Obama campaign was forcing Republicans, on principle, to systematically oppose most of the things that the administration wanted them to oppose -- thereby shielding itself from the unwelcome consequences of its own ideology while winning political points. Now, in defeat, Republicans should agree to let the chips lie where they fall: Tax only the truly rich; reward only the truly deserving illegal immigrants; and exempt no one from Obamacare.

Winning the Latino Vote If the Democrats have the winning formula, why not copy them?By Victor Davis Hanson

Over the last three weeks, I think I have read most of the post-election op-eds written on the Latino vote. I have studied exit polling, read sophisticated demographic analyses, and talked to as many Latinos in my hometown as I could. The result is that I would not advise Republicans to go down the identity-politics route. I don’t wish to live in an America where Steve Lara or Bob Martinez is reduced to an anonymous “Latino” and Victor Hanson is just a “white male.”

But if Republicans really believe there is a monolithic Latino vote, and if those of Hispanic descent are easily definable and vote predictably en masse and along tribal lines rather than as individuals, then perhaps Republican pundits and operatives hell-bent on wining the Latino vote might consider the following — not entirely unserious — recommendations.

1. Family values. I didn’t sense a big upsurge among Latinos that I know for Rick Santorum and his religious-based agenda. The Catholicism of Santorum or of Newt Gingrich had little resonance. Abortion, gay marriage, and ending “Don’t ask, don’t tell” seemed mostly non-issues. Nor do I gather that Latinos in central California vote on the basis of family values any more than do non-Latinos. Mike Huckabee’s family populism would win few adherents. In terms of divorce, illegitimacy, crime, and high-school-graduation rates, there are few statistical differences that reflect any ethnic patterns. Family values in the Latino community may be defined somewhat differently from the way elite Republican consultants imagine, perhaps more along the ancient Spanish notion of a patron/client relationship that ultimately originated in Rome. (Marc: This is EXACTLY right IMHO.)

In our time, the patron is seen as the big and powerful federal government, which has an obligation to care for its less-well-off and unfortunately all-too-often-dependent and oppressed clients, who in turn will vote in thanks for state help with food, shelter, education, and health care. The patron of the classical hacienda protects the client against outlaws and oppressive forces — in this case supposedly rich old white guys (see Obama’s “punish our enemies”), who are not sensitive to the needs of a victimized “other.” If Republicans wish to win on this more European and statist notion of family values, then I would suggest trying to expand food stamps, add more coverage to Obamacare, and forgive delinquent mortgages, student loans, and small-business loans. The key would be to fashion a family-values platform that worries more about the collective familia than the more individualist and stereotypically Anglo-Saxon agendas of the well-off. High taxes and generous redistributionist spending are far more a mark of family values than is being against abortion or for traditional marriage.

2. Immigration. The DREAM Act, as La Raza activists have argued, is the beginning, not the end, of needed amnesties. To win the Latino vote on this issue, I suggest stopping all the talk of reforming legal immigration, especially the elitist notion that all immigration must be “legal” or, worse yet, predicated on skill sets, education, a knowledge of English, and capital. All such criteria are interpreted as mere cover for the prejudicial and discriminatory, since they tend to favor advantaged Europeans or Asians at the expense of disadvantaged Latinos. As a friend said to me, “It’s our turn; you had enough people come here from Europe.” Better yet, as I read La Raza literature, Republicans might consider dropping altogether the obsession with a “border” that discriminates against indigenous folk on both sides of the current artificially constructed line. They should accept the undeniable fact that there is a Mexico and an America — but also something new and unique in between, developing within the 200 miles north and south of the Rio Grande. I think support for a blanket amnesty for 11 million unlawful immigrants and an end to the fixation on border “security” might seriously help Republicans with Latinos. And it is high time that conservatives stop demanding that we complete that silly border fence; perhaps they should even call for dismantling that anachronism once and for all.

3. Affirmative action and diversity. I would put emphasis on the salad bowl and forget the archaic and now mythical melting pot. The more hyphenated names, newly acquired accent marks, and trilled Rs the better. There should be hundreds of Republican Latino-American and Republican Viva la Raza committees. It also would be wise to stop the nativist fringe nonsense about English as the official national language. Instead, conservatives should welcome bilingualism in the schools and encourage simultaneous Spanish-language translation at their conventions and campaign stops. The way of the future is multilingual ballots, government forms, and IDs that do not seek to privilege one tradition over another.====================

. State spending. Republicans are apparently unaware that their mantra of smaller government is a dog whistle for cutting state spending and employment for the less-well-off. Yet many first-generation Latino-Americans rightly see government employment — the post office, the DMV, the county offices, the schools — as an important bridge into the middle class. When Republicans talk of cutting spending, Latinos feel targeted. Why cut the hours of a DMV employee so that a grandee in Atherton has low enough taxes to afford a third Mercedes? To win the Latino vote, conservatives have to concede bigger deficits, higher social spending, and more government employment. They should examine very carefully the demographics of Jerry Brown’s winning campaign to pass Proposition 30, which just ensured that California will have the highest taxes in the nation and will be able to continue to provide the most generous welfare support and state-employee compensation packages. (As my same friend put it, “If rich guys want to leave California, well, good riddance.”) If Republicans could fashion something like Prop. 30 on the federal level, they might receive as large a percentage of the Latino vote as did the California ballot initiative. If George W. Bush received a larger Latino vote than did Mitt Romney, perhaps it was not because of his halting Spanish, but because of his compassionate conservatism as embodied in No Child Left Behind, an enhanced unfunded prescription-drug Medicare benefit, and a vast increase in annual deficit spending and the size of the federal government. Note how loudly opposing most of what Bush did led to shrinkage in the Latino vote for Romney in 2012.

5. “Them.” Barack Obama brilliantly and cynically created a loose coalition of those with grievances against the supposed white male establishment. It did not matter that some members of this coalition were multimillionaire elites like Elizabeth Warren or affluent Chinese-Americans or Cuban-Americans who are the grandkids of those dispossessed by murderous Communists in Havana or Beijing. The Obama administration’s four-year barrage of “my people,” “punish our enemies,” “a nation of cowards,” the Skip Gates pontification, the Trayvon Martin if-I-had-a-son line, Eric Holder’s charges of racism over the Fast and Furious investigation, the whites-in-Hell slurs from Joseph Lowery, who gave the benediction at Obama’s inauguration in 2008, the hyphenated campaign committees, the executive orders, Sandra Fluke, the constant charges of racism by the liberal media, the weekly outraged Black Caucus — all of that insidiously created a climate of socially acceptable anti-old-white-guy feeling that anyone not of that suspect group could buy into — and anyone of that unfortunate group could buy out of by loudly proclaiming his support for Obama.

Is this not a model for capturing more of the Latino vote? If the Republicans could nominate a non-white-male, then he could rally the forces of non-white-maleness and find a majority coalition based on collective grievances. Chinese-Americans would vote with Japanese-Americans. Rich Cubans would vote with poor Oaxacans. Third-generation upper-middle-class Arab-Americans could even join with Jewish-Americans on the rallying cry that they had grievances against “them.” If a conservative Marco Rubio or Bobby Jindal — or better yet, Nikki Haley — could wage such an us/them campaign, where could the white male voter really go?

Short answer: Nowhere.

If what liberals say is true — that the Republican party is rightly lumped together as too white, too old, too male, and too in control — why not, then, have Republicans run a stereotyped class/race/gender campaign against themselves? Why not point to the supposed mess America has become after 238 years, and say, “We think you can do better”?

Why not “Vote for us, because we don’t like ourselves all that much either”?

With all the efforts to understand the recent election defeat, a lot of the focus has been on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his campaign. That is exactly the wrong way to begin analyzing the outcome of the 2012 campaign. The focus on Romney as a candidate is profoundly misleading for those who want to prepare for future Republican victories.

Any analysis of recent Republican presidential results will reveal a systemic failure which can’t be ascribed to Romney.

The last clear Republican presidential victory was in 1988 when Vice President George H W Bush won with 53.37 percent over Dukakis.

Since then we have lost the popular vote in five out of six elections for president and dramatically underperformed in re-electing a president with the lowest margin in the history of presidential re-elections. (Other incumbents were defeated for re-election but none was re-elected with a narrower margin than President George W. Bush in 2004.)

Consider the results:

President George H. W. Bush lost re-election in 1992 in a three way race with then-Gov. Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. The Republican got 38 percent in a three way race.

Then-Gov. George W Bush got 543,816 fewer votes than Vice President Al Gore, but won because of a fluke in the electoral college. It was the fourth weakest winning performance in American history.

President George W Bush was re-elected with 50.73 percent of the vote in 2004. It was the weakest Presidential re-election in American history. This was against a candidate who on 53 issues averaged being in the minority position by 77 to 17 percent as a senator and whose record was more liberal than Senator Ted Kennedy’s.

By contrast, President Richard Nixon got 60.17 percent of the vote for re-election in 1972 and President Ronald Reagan got 58.77 percent of the vote for re-election in 1984. So the Republicans in 2004 were running between eight and ten per cent behind the norm for re-election.

Then Sen. Obama beat Sen. McCain in 2008 with the Republican only getting 45 percent and losing by 9,549,000 votes.

The defeat of Romney with 47.61 percent of the vote running 5,910,000 behind President Obama is about the norm for recent Republican candidates.

Instead of looking at the Romney campaign in isolation Republican activists and analysts should be looking at the culture, structure and system of the GOP and its consultants, people who are paid for campaign advice without long term institutional responsibilities.

Republicans need a thorough systematic lessons-learned approach because the problem is systemic rather than personality-based.

Any team which has had 20 straight years of underperforming ought to review the entire system and not simply focus on the newest scapegoat.

In the first weeks of our “Lessons to be Learned” project at Gingrich Productions, we have already begun to develop insights that are systemic rather than personality driven.

There are big problems from the failure to think strategically about issues, to the unwillingness to engage the proliferation of infotainment outlets, to the methodical failure to include minorities even when they agree with us on values and issues.

Over the next few months we will be issuing a series of reports on different aspects of the Republican failure to modernize.

As George Santayana warned: “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

We do not need to lose five of the next six presidential elections to learn that we have some serious thinking to do.

Crafty,You're right (as usual). I don't want a crash. It doesn't have to be either tyranny or total anarchy.

Doug,Your right that there seems to be this subset of voters who either don't vote, or can change their minds about who to vote for on the basis of a single news story or how they feel that day. These voters are still deciding the elections I guess.

While the Dems seem to win some over with Christmas gifts the Repubs only have ideology and the evidence. Can that win over enough voters?

Thank God for some like Levin or Limbaugh. If only we had savvy pols on our side who had *their* gift of gab and charisma. If Romney only had some of that. Except for the first debate.....

Gingrich was close. He had some of it.....

How do we convince people the government is not good to depend on. We can talk debt, deficit, spending, forever but how do we get people to have the courage and the faith to give up their government assistance??

Some people are worried. They are not simply moochers (though some certainly are). They are fighting a losing battle to pay their bills. They are scared.

We may be able to win the hearts and minds of some of the middle clas, but how do we convince them to risk their pockbooks to the Republicans?

A deep and important question and the full answering of it exceeds my concentration as bedtime approaches.

I would put spending in our cross hairs in Reaganesque soundbite simplicity. I know I have hammered on these data previously.

a) 40-45% of federal spending is deficit spending.b) 65-70% of that is financed by the Fed.

Present the question: How can this possibly lead to anything except disaster?

c) divide the deficit spending by Obama by the number of jobs created (be smart and precise with the definition of jobs created) so as to generate a cost per job created. Anyone care to take a stab at this?

d) Average federal employee pay (including pension and medical) vs. the average for the private sector; numbers of fed employees making $100k+ when Baraq took office and now.

e) Hammer away at low interest rates as a gift to Wall Street and the banks that is a "War on Savers" (including your parents and grandparents)

f) Baseline budgeting!!! FOX seems to have gotten ahold of this one. Hallelujah!

I know all of these points have been made elsewhere and here before but we need to go "prison sewing machine" with them

Crafty excellent points. Thanks for some thoughts. In addition to these thoughts

I would also like to add that we have to "break" the stranglehold the Dem party has with minorities. By segmenting the market of voters (if we can borrow a marketing phrase) into gays, blacks, latinos, women (particularly single), labor and bribing each group with different big gov agendas they have achieved enough numbers to win. This we know. This we can see. Somehow we (republicans) have to reshape the debate. We can't keep segmenting the electorate into groups and bribing each one lest we wind up with tyrannical government that controls too many sectors too many voters, whether tax paying or on entitlements, without each and every one of them becoming controlled wards of the "state".

This line of reasoning fits in to my thoughts about attracting more Blacks to the party. We have to do better than we have at convincing them that they are making a big mistake in being hard core democrats. The Dems may promise them entitlements but they are also using them to push the overall progressive agenda. And this agenda cares NOTHING about Blacks. It is about one world government, loss of US sovereignty, autonomy, less personal freedoms, more government control and dispersing wealth not strictly to them, but around the world. Some Blacks are fully aware of this. Just as they are finally achieving more in US society, they are inadvertantly supporting a party that is controlled by socialists who are planning to give it all away (except their own power).

Monica Crowley had a great guest on her radio show today. This is exactly the theme I was thinking. Mr. Bryant was head of the NAACP in the late 80's when he was asked to deliver a speech about pro abortion while representing the NAACP. He then realized he, as a Black man was being used, not for the agenda of Blacks, but for the agenda of the liberals. Folks, when her refused to give this speech, because he is anti-abortion, there were many calls for him to removed from his postion. He realized the DEm party is co -opted by the socialists and left it.

Check out this link and see for yourself. I think he is a great spokeperson for the teaparty. I think the right has to learn from this:

GM, if you are right and there is a giant crash, the Republicans have to in the words that Rahm Emanuel borrowed and expressed,

"let no disaster go to waste".

Repubs and teapartiers still have to be ready to seize back power when the time is right. If WE are not ready, the liberals, with a newer version of socialist, communist, one world government will be there to fill the void.

From history

Vladimir Lenin waited his entire adult life fighting for his bolshevik cause, shaping it, studying, re-shaping it more, studying more, getting his propaganda out there so to speak, when to his surprise the time was right several months after the Tsar lost power in 1917 to make his move. He had his supporters in place, he was known throughout socialist circles due to his propaganda newspapers, and he made his appearance back in Russia with his small circle of accomplices and by sheer force of will, determination, and single mindedness accomplished his goals. Interestingly, it appears he was coming to the conclusion the time to do this would not come in his lifetime. He was wrong. But he was ready nonetheless.

Fast forward to the present time and it is obvious there are no such visible leaders in our party. No one even close to a Lenin who comes to mind. No doubt many conservative thinkers including Newt are rethinking this all through. Till we have OUR ONE we have to hope they can shape things behind the scenes.

If I was younger and smarter I would have liked to have been part of it. The struggle for freedom has returned. Some don't see it. Some don't care,. Others are bribed. Some are only looking at their specialty groups agendas.

Time will tell. I dread the reality of of another 4 yrs of the present abomination.

Oh, they have a plan. It's called Cloward-Piven. I don't think it's going to work out like they expect.

August 1, 2011 Cloward-Piven Paradise Now?By Jeannie DeAngelis

Combine class warfare, demonizing the rich, getting as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible, and pushing the economic system to collapse and you have a flawless formula for Cloward-Piven 2.0 -- and a vehicle that ensures Obama remains in power.

Cloward-Piven is a much talked-about strategy proposed in the mid-1960's by two Columbia University sociology professors named Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The Cloward-Piven approach was sometimes referred to as the "crisis strategy," which they believed were a means to "end poverty."

The premise of the Cloward-Piven collective/anti-capitalist gospel decried "individual mobility and achievement," celebrated organized labor, fostered the principle that "if each finally found himself in the same relative economic relationship to his fellows ... all were infinitely better off."

The duo taught that if you flooded the welfare rolls and bankrupted the cities and ultimately the nation, it would foster economic collapse, which would lead to political turmoil so severe that socialism would be accepted as a fix to an out-of-control set of circumstances.

The idea was that if people were starving and the only way to eat was to accept government cheese, rather than starve, the masses would agree to what they would otherwise reject. In essence, for the socialist-minded, the Cloward-Piven strategy is a simple formula that makes perfect sense; the radical husband-and-wife team had Saul Alinsky as their muse, and they went on to teach his social action principles to a cadre of socialist-leaning community organizers, one of whom was Barack Obama.

As the debt crisis continues to worsen, President Obama stands idly by an inferno with his arms crossed, shaking his head, and doing nothing other than kinking the fire hose and closing the spigot. Spectator Obama is complaining that the structure of the American economy is engulfed in flames while accusing the Congress, which is trying desperately to douse the fire, of doing nothing about the problem.

Although speculative, if the Cloward-Piven strategy is the basis of the left's game plan, spearheaded by Alinsky devotee Barack Obama, it certainly explains the President's inaction and detached attitude.

The greatest nation in the history of the world is teetering on the brink of a catastrophic economic crisis. America was pushed to this point by a rapidly-expanding national debt and a stressed-out entitlement system; in the center of this crisis is the President, who insists on expanding it even further, all in the name "fairness" and "social justice."

As a default date nears and the President threatens seniors that there's a chance they may not receive their Social Security checks, it has been revealed that the federal government disperses a stunning 80 million checks a month, which means that about a third of the US adult population could be receiving some sort of entitlement.

Since the 1960's when Cloward-Piven presented a socialistic guideline to usher in the type of evenhandedness Obama lauds, America's entitlement rolls have swelled from eight million to 80 million. If the nation's ability to disperse handouts were ever disrupted, it's not hard to see how chaos would erupt should an angry army of millions demand what Cloward-Piven called "the right to income."

Couple the threat of dried-up funds for food stamps, Social Security, unemployment benefits and the like with the Obama administration's vigorous campaign to turn a tiny upper class of big earners into the enemy, and you have the Cloward-Piven recipe for anarchy and complete collapse.

If the worst happened, Saul Alinsky's biggest fan, whose poll numbers continue to plummet, could use mayhem in the streets to remain firmly ensconced in the White House. Alinsky taught his students a basic principle that community organizer Barack Obama learned well: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Fiscal disintegration coupled with lawlessness would deliver the type of Cloward-Piven/Saul Alinsky trifecta that progressives have worked toward and waited decades for.

Barack Obama has spent the last 1,000+ days defying reason and choosing policy directions that seem nonsensical to the rational mind: a failed stimulus package; ObamaCare; growing the deficit to astronomical proportions; and cynically portraying wealth as immoral. Now, when cuts are the only fix to a budgetary balloon about to burst, a seemingly illogical President digs in and demands additional phantom dollars to spend on a system that is collapsing under the weight of unmanageable debt.

It's hard to figure out the method to the President's obvious madness, because based on Obama's approval rating, if the election were held today even Pee Wee Herman could replace Obama behind the Resolute Desk. Maybe the "method" isn't "mad" in the least!

Could it be that Barack Obama is purposely pressuring the system in a premeditated effort to foster a major crisis? One that would demand extraordinary measures to control by a President who could then mete out basic sustenance to Americans who would agree to anything to regain some sense of normalcy. And in the process successfully usher in the "socially just" system Barack Obama has dreamed of all his life.

While radical Alinsky/Cloward-Piven disciple Obama appears to be clueless and detached, it may be a ploy; he may actually be focused and engaged as he purposely pursues an Alinsky-inspired course of action to force the system to "live up" to its own rules. Obama's ultimate goal of once-and-for-all discrediting the capitalist system and replacing America's foundational economic and social tenets with a broad-based socialist one headed by progressive Marxists like himself, is actually within reach.

As Obama pushes and prods the US economy and instigates social unrest, it could be that he believes a Cloward-Piven-style utopia resides just beyond the horizon -- a progressive panacea where an election-free, classless society, thankful for a simple crust of bread, looks to Barack Obama to keep the peace by remaining in power indefinitely.

Therefore, unless all of America, regardless of class or political persuasion, pays attention to the potential for a bleak future that lies ahead and realizes the President's non-plan could be itself an actual calculated plan, the resulting consequences will affect everyone, as Barack Obama transforms a once great nation into Cloward and Piven's idea of paradise.

These should not be foreboding years. The U.S. is in the midst of a veritable energy revolution. There is a godsend of new gas and oil discoveries that will help to curtail our fiscal and foreign policy vulnerabilities — an energy bonanza despite, not because of [1], the present administration.

Demographically, our rivals — the EU, China, Russia, and Japan — are both shrinking and aging [2] at rates far in excess of our own [3].

In terms of farming, the United States is exporting more produce than ever before at record prices. Americans eat the safest and cheapest food on the planet.

As far as high-tech gadgetry, the global companies that have most changed the world in recent years — Amazon’s online buying, Google search engines, Apple iPhones, iPads, and Mac laptops — are mostly American. There is a reason why Mexican nationals are not crossing their border into Guatemala — and it is not because they prefer English speakers to Spanish speakers.

Militarily, the United States is light years ahead of its rivals. And so on…

The New Poverty Is the Old Middle Class

We have redefined poverty itself [4] through government entitlements, modes of mass production and consumerism, and technological breakthroughs. The poor man is not hungry; more likely he suffers from obesity, now endemic among the less affluent. He is not deprived of a big-screen TV, a Kia, warm water, or an air conditioner. (My dad got our first color television during my first year in college in 1972, a small 19 inch portable; I bought my first new car at 39, and quit changing my own oil at 44.)

In classical terms, today’s poor man is poor not in relative global terms (e.g. compared to a Russian, Bolivian, or Yemeni), but in the sense that there are those in America who have more things and choices than does he: a BMW instead of a Hyundai, ribeye instead of ground beef, Pellegrino rather than regular Coke, Tuscany in the summer rather than Anaheim at Disneyland, and L.L. Bean tasteful footwear rather than Payless shoes. I was in Manhattan not long ago, and noticed that my cheap, discount-store sportcoat and Target tie did not raise eyebrows among the wealthy people I spoke to, suggesting that the veneer of aristocracy is now within all our reach. When I returned to Selma, I noted that those ahead of me at Super Wal-Mart were clothed no differently than was I. Their EBD cards bought about the same foods.

Put all the above developments together, and an alignment of the planets is favoring America as never before — as long as we do not do something stupid to nullify what fate, our ancestors, and our own ingenuity have given us. But unfortunately that is precisely what is now happening.

The New Hubris

These are the most foreboding times in my 59 years. The reelection of Barack Obama has released a surge of rare honesty among the Left about its intentions, coupled with a sense of triumphalism that the country is now on board for still greater redistributionist change.

There is no historical appreciation among the new progressive technocracy that central state planning [5], whether the toxic communist brand or supposedly benevolent socialism, has only left millions of corpses in its wake, or abject poverty and misery. Add up the Soviet Union and Mao’s China and the sum is 80 million murdered or starved to death. Add up North Korea, Cuba, and the former Eastern Europe, and the tally is egalitarian poverty and hopelessness. The EU sacrificed democratic institutions for coerced utopianism and still failed, leaving its Mediterranean shore bankrupt and despondent.

Nor is there much philosophical worry that giving people massive subsidies destroys individualism, the work ethic, and the personal sense of accomplishment. There is rarely worry expressed that a profligate nation that borrows from others abroad and those not born has no moral compass. There is scant political appreciation that the materialist Marxist argument — that justice is found only through making sure that everyone has the same slice of stuff from the zero-sum pie — was supposed to end up on the ash heap of history.

Read the News and Weep

That is not conspiracy talk, but simply a distillation of what I read today. On the last day of the year when I am writing this, I offer you just three sample op-eds.

A journalist, Donald Kaul, in the Des Moines Register offers us a three-step, presto! plan [6] to stop school shootings:

Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. … Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. …Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

Note the new ease with which the liberal mind calls for trashing the Constitution, outlawing those whom they don’t like (reminiscent of “punish our enemies” [7]?), and killing those politicians with whom they don’t agree (we are back to Bush Derangement Syndrome, when novels, movies, and op-eds dreamed of the president’s assassination [8].)

What would be the Register’s reaction should a conservative opponent of abortion dare write, “Repeal the First Amendment; ban Planned Parenthood as a terrorist organization; and drag Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi from a truck”? If an idiot were to write that trash, I doubt the Washington Times or Wall Street Journal would print such sick calls for overturning the Constitution and committing violence against public officials.

Ah Yes, Still More Redistribution

Turning to a column in The New Republic, John Judis, in honest fashion, more or less puts all the progressive cards on the table in a column titled “Obama’s Tax Hikes Won’t Be Nearly Big Enough [9]” — a candor about what the vast $5 trillion deficits of Obama’s first term were all about in the first place.

Here is the summation quote: “But to fund these programs, governments will have to extract a share of income from those who are able to afford them and use the revenues to make the services available for everyone.”

Note that Judas was not talking about the projected new taxes in the fiscal cliff talks, but something far greater to come. He understands well that the “gorge the beast” philosophy that resulted in these astronomical debts will require enormous new sources of revenue, funds “to extract” from “those who are able to afford them” in order to “make services available for everyone.”

That is about as neat a definition of coerced socialism as one can find. Implicit in Judas’s formulation is that only a very well-educated (and well-compensated) technocratic class will possess the wisdom, the proper schooling, and the morality to adjudicate who are to be the extracted ones and who the new “everyone.”

The Constitution — Who the Hell Needs It?

The third item in my year-end reading was the most disturbing. A law professor (could it be otherwise?) named Louis Michael Seidman enlightens us with “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution” [10] — yet another vision of what the now triumphant liberal mind envisions for us all:

As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Did Madison force Obama to borrow a half-billion dollars to fund Solyndra and its multimillionaire con artists?

Note Seidman’s use of “evil,” which tips his hand that our great moralist is on an ethical crusade to change the lives of lesser folk, who had the misfortune of growing up in America — a place so much less prosperous, fair, and secure than, say, Russia, China, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Spain, Greece, Italy, or Japan and Germany (in the earlier 20th century history) . When I lived in Greece, traveled to Libya, and went into Mexico, I forgot to sigh, “My God, these utopias are possible for us too, if we just junked that evil Constitution.”

White Guys Did It

The non-archaic, un-idiosyncratic, and anti-downright evil Professor Seidman presses his argument against his inferiors who wrote the “evil” document: “Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago.”

Ah yes, old white male Madison, who lacked the insight, character, and morality of our new liberal technocrats in our successful law schools, such as, well, Mr. Seidman himself:

As someone who has taught constitutional law for almost 40 years, I am ashamed it took me so long to see how bizarre all this is. Imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress – reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action. Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?

I suppose human nature changes every decade or so [11], so why shouldn’t constitutions as well?

I can see Seidman’s vision now: Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi decides that semi-automatic handguns, not cheap Hollywood violence or sick video games, empower the insane to kill, and, presto, their “considered judgment” and favored “particular course of action” trump the archaic and evil wisdom of “white propertied men.” But if we wish to avoid the baleful influence of white guys, can Seidman point to indigenous Aztec texts for liberal guidance, or perhaps the contemporary constitution of liberated Zimbabwe, or the sagacity of the Chinese court system?

The Law Is What We Say It Is

Note the fox-in-the-henhouse notion that a constitutional law professor essentially hates the Constitution he is supposed to teach, sort of like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warning the Egyptians not to follow our own constitutional example, when South Africa has offered so much more to humanity than did Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and others: “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa.” [12] Ginsburg obviously vacations in Johannesburg, goes to Cape Town for her medical treatment, and has a vacation home and bank account in the scenic South African countryside.

Seidman looks fondly on Roosevelt’s war against the Constitution (especially the notion that law is essentially what an elected president who has proper “aspirations” says it is):

In his Constitution Day speech in 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt professed devotion to the document, but as a statement of aspirations rather than obligations. This reading no doubt contributed to his willingness to extend federal power beyond anything the framers imagined, and to threaten the Supreme Court when it stood in the way of his New Deal legislation.

No doubt.

Free at Last from Constitutional Chains

In the age of Obama, the constitutional law lecturer who once lamented that the Supreme Court had not gone far enough by failing to take up questions of forced redistribution, Seidman writes:

In the face of this long history of disobedience, it is hard to take seriously the claim by the Constitution’s defenders that we would be reduced to a Hobbesian state of nature if we asserted our freedom from this ancient text. Our sometimes flagrant disregard of the Constitution has not produced chaos or totalitarianism; on the contrary, it has helped us to grow and prosper.

But I thought it was the Constitution, not the anti-Constitution or egalitarian good will, that separated us from Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Tojo’s Japan, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, and most of the miserable places that one sees abroad today, from Cuba to North Korea, which all had and have one thing in common — the embrace of some sort of national, republican, or democratic “socialism” guiding their efforts and plastered about in their sick mottoes.

The progressive mind, given that it is more enlightened and moral, alone can determine which parts of the “evil” Constitution should be summarily ignored (e.g., the Second Amendment) and which should not be: “This is not to say that we should disobey all constitutional commands. Freedom of speech and religion, equal protection of the laws and protections against governmental deprivation of life, liberty or property are important, whether or not they are in the Constitution. We should continue to follow those requirements out of respect, not obligation.”

Give Real Freedom a Chance

I am sure that history offers all sorts of examples where people without evil documents like our Constitution protected free speech and religious worship — out of “respect.” Ask Socrates, Jesus, six million Jews, 20 million Russians, or those with eyeglasses [13] during the days of the Khmer Rouge. Apparently, what stops such carnage is not the rule of constitutional law, but good progressive minds who care for others and show respect. I’ll try that rhetoric on the next thief who for the fourth time will steal the copper wire conduit from my pump.

So just dream with Professor Seidman:

The deep-seated fear that such disobedience would unravel our social fabric is mere superstition. As we have seen, the country has successfully survived numerous examples of constitutional infidelity…What has preserved our political stability is not a poetic piece of parchment, but entrenched institutions and habits of thought and, most important, the sense that we are one nation and must work out our differences. No one can predict in detail what our system of government would look like if we freed ourselves from the shackles of constitutional obligation, and I harbor no illusions that any of this will happen soon. But even if we can’t kick our constitutional-law addiction, we can soften the habit… before abandoning our heritage of self-government, we ought to try extricating ourselves from constitutional bondage so that we can give real freedom a chance.

I have seen their future and it is almost here right now. Scary times, indeed.

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

1. In general, people who vote with the progressives are economically more risk-averse compared with conservatives. "The Democratic party is in fact a coalition of financially risk-averse groups: Women, blacks, and Hispanics all exhibit a high degree of financial risk-aversion when compared with whites and men."

2. "economic inequality matters much more to Americans than conservatives like to admit." In poorer countries, people look see things in more absolute terms. As we get richer and basic needs are met, people look more at how are they doing compared to someone else.

3. "Conservatives see people as assets, and progressives see people as liabilities." This is a huge difference. He gives the GM bailout as example. Liberals see the bailout as keeping those people from all being unemployed and on assistance. Conservatives see the bailout as keeping them from moving to far more productive activities elsewhere. Same for abortion. Liberals see the 'unwanted' as just more mouths to feed, conservatives see the loss of tremendous human talent.

Williamson closes with the conservative turnaround in Sweden. "Sweden’s reform-oriented conservatives have been able to achieve a great deal not because they are moderate — they are quite radical by Swedish standards — but in part because they took the time to really understand their rivals’ motives and, unlike unsuccessful conservatives before them, did not treat their opponents’ concerns as illegitimate. Conservative reformers took into account Sweden’s egalitarian culture and its consensus-oriented politics rather than wage a Newt Gingrich–style armored assault."-----------------

It's Pirate Time for the GOP The party needs to be unpredictable and bold—and grab some of Obama's issues.By PEGGY NOONAN

It's official. Congress is now less popular than cockroaches and colonoscopies, though more popular than the ebola virus and gonorrhea. Really. The numbers came, this week, from a Public Policy Polling survey. The House and Senate have an approval rating of 9%.

GOP governors are the party's most esteemed leaders, but they're not in Washington. The Republican voice and presence in our national debates comes from its members on the Hill. They're the ones America sees on the news every day, which is unfortunate because they are, largely, deal makers, legislators and even plain speakers who are not necessarily gifted explainers or thinkers.

They are up against the Democratic voice and presence. That would be President Obama (approval rating in the low to mid 50s) and his White House. He is just off a major electoral win, commands the national mic, is about to be celebrated at a second swearing-in, and will soon give a nationally covered inaugural address. Also he just won on the fiscal cliff, for now. We'll see the blowback. Payroll taxes have just gone up, ObamaCare is yet to be fully instituted and will be costly, things are about to get more expensive for everybody. But at the moment he's king.

And what the Republican Party has each day going up against him—presenting the party's case, explaining its thinking—is a disparate and fractious lot of varying talent who, again, are connected to an institution less popular than cockroaches.

It doesn't, at the moment, seem a fair fight.

Normally we see Republican congressmen and senators in a gaggle, and their message always seems to get lost. They're usually talking about pieces of things, some part of a bill, or an amendment. Little they say seems to cohere, or to connect with a higher purpose, intent or meaning. What they say doesn't amount to a cacophony—it's not that lively. Their message always seems muted and blurred.

Congressional Republicans haven't been able to come up with an immediate and overarching goal or a strategy to achieve it. Many feel as if they're always in the dark, unclear on what the leadership is thinking or about to do.

But a goal and strategy are needed. Without them, everything will seem ad hoc, provisional, formless, meaningless. The public will see it that way, especially in comparison to the president, who seems these days to have a surer sense of what he's about, and a greater confidence that you've finally twigged on to it, too.

So here's an idea for Republicans in Congress. It has to do in part with policy, in part with attitude and approach.

They should starkly assess their position. It isn't good. They just lost an election, they're up against the wall, they have to figure out how to survive and thrive as a party that stands for something, while attempting each day to do the work that needs doing for a country in trouble. The challenges are huge, the odds long.

They can sit back and be depressed and whine. Or they can decide: It's pirate time.

And really, it is.

Now is the time to fight and be fearless, to be surprising, to break out of lockstep, to be the one thing Republicans aren't supposed to be, and that is interesting.

Now's the time to put a dagger 'tween their teeth, wave a sword, grab a rope and swing aboard the enemy's galleon. Take the president's issues, steal them—they never belonged to him, they're yours!

In political terms this means: Reorient yourselves. Declare for Main Street over Wall Street, stand for the little guy against the big interests. And move. Don't wait for the bill, declare the sentiments of your corner..

Really, it's pirate time.

Examples of what might be done:

If you are conservative you are skeptical of concentrated power. You know the bullying and bossism it can lead to. Republicans should go to the populist right on the issue of bank breakup. Too big to fail is too big to continue. The megabanks have too much power in Washington and too much weight within the financial system. People think the GOP is for the bankers. The GOP should upend this assumption. In this case good policy is good politics.

If you are a conservative you're supposed to be for just treatment of the individual over the demands of concentrated elites. Every individual in America making $400,000 a year or more just got a tax hike that was a blow to the gut. Regular working people are seeing their payroll deductions increase. But private-equity partners who make billions enjoy more favorable tax treatment. Their income is treated for tax purposes as a capital gain, so they're taxed at far lower rates. This is called the carried interest exemption, and everybody knows it's a big con.

The Republican Party should come out against it in a big way. Let the real rich pay the same percentage the not-actually-rich-but-formally-declared-rich are paying. If the Republicans did this they'd actually be joining the winning side, because carried interest will not survive the new era. If congressional Republicans care about their party they'll want it to get credit for fairness, as opposed to the usual blame for being lackeys of the rich.

Republicans make too much of order and discipline. Sometimes a little anarchy is a good thing, a little disorder a sign of creativity and independence of thought. If there are voices within the GOP that are for some part or parts of gun reform it would be good for them—and for the party—to come forward now. I love the Second Amendment and I'm not kidding, but I have to say tens of millions of assault weapons in the hands of gangbangers and unstable young men couldn't be what the Founders had in mind.

We need a little moderation here, a little give.

Finally, Republicans should shock everyone, including themselves, by pushing for immigration reform—now. Don't wait for the president, do it yourselves, come forward individually or in groups with the argument for legalization of who lives here now. Such bills should include border control and pathways for citizenship, but—and most important—they shouldn't seem punitive or grudging and involve fines and lines and new ways to sue employers. The world has changed. Ease up now. In the past 10 years immigrants, legal and illegal, have fought our wars. We need to hurry in those who are trying to bring gifts we need into the USA. Whoever comes here learns to love our crazy country, or at least appreciate it. If we do a better job of teaching them why the goodness we have even exists, we will do OK.

The point here is to have the GOP lead in terms of good policy. But it's also important for the Republicans to show the variety, disagreement and alive-ness that exists within the party. It is not some grim monolith, some thought-free zone, or was not meant to be. It's not bad to be unpredictable. Living things are.

Members should loosen up, speak for their corner, put together caucuses, go forward, move. Go on TV, dagger and sword, and make your case.